I was creeping down the streets of Zion, Illinois, transporting a newly purchased antique table in the back of my Jeep, when I was overcome by a sneezing fit. When the eruptions subsided and I opened my watery eyes, I was in front of a low-slung brick building with a stenciled sign reading healing rooms of zion in the window. I was in the market for healing: yet another infection had attacked my chronically screwed-up sinuses, and I had a cough like a death rattle. I don’t like taking antibiotics. If I took them every time my sinuses acted up, I’d be popping pills all winter. But the natural remedy I’d been trying was getting me nowhere. I pulled over and jotted down the number on the window.
“You mean speaking in tongues?”
I must have looked edgy because Burleson continued, “There’s nothing to be nervous about. They just pray over you. It takes about 15 or 20 minutes. They’ve already seen six people tonight. There’s someone in there now.”
“You get the comfy chair,” said Hass, guiding me to a cushioned office chair that stood in the middle of the room. “Just try and take it all in. Absorb it all. You don’t have to understand or follow what’s being said, just be open to it and take it in. Some people experience a tingling sensation, which indicates healing is happening. But some don’t, and that doesn’t mean healing isn’t going on.”
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It was a rambling prayer. Hass asked Christ to come into my heart, to let me know I was loved, to fill me with the knowledge that Jesus was there. Behind me, Helstrom murmured, “Yes, Jesus, oh Jesus, you are the one.” On my right, Hood did the same. I felt a tingling sensation. Goose bumps.
From behind me, Helstrom said I was filled with God’s spirit. “When you were being knitted in the womb,” she explained, “he breathed his spirit and a soul into you.” Hood began praying for the Lord to draw me into prayer and allow me to feel his presence.
I was light-headed but my lungs felt slightly clearer as I left the healing room. Back in the waiting room, I scanned a shelf full of pamphlets and selected one called The Promise of Divine Healing, by Barbara Keisman. I coughed.
